Home networking refers to systems that allow users of computing devices, audio devices, and video devices to network the devices within their homes. The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) was formed in recent years to generate standards for interaction and communication protocol usage between devices networked within a home environment.
Devices that store audio and video content within a DLNA-compliant home network are known as DLNA servers. Devices that are capable of accessing and rendering content stored on DLNA servers are known as DLNA clients. DLNA clients typically take the form of audio or video players. Users of conventional DLNA client devices access each DLNA server independently to determine what content is available on the respective DLNA server. User interfaces associated with conventional DLNA client devices provide a directory hierarchy representation of each DLNA server and the user independently accesses and traverses each directory component to determine what content is available on the respective DLNA server. Additionally, web and DLNA protocols are incompatible protocols. Accordingly, conventional web-based applications cannot access the audio and video content stored on DLNA servers within a DLNA network.